This invention relates to deleavers and, more specifically, to improvements in deleavers. Representative prior art is the commonly assigned United States Absler et al Pat. No. 3,514,094.
Mechanized handling of business forms is becoming increasingly popular due to the continual rise of the cost of labor. This is particularly true as regards processing of so-called continuous business forms wherein superimposed plies of stationery in extremely long strips make up a plurality of individual business forms which may be separated from each other by a burster. Frequently, but not always, the various stationery plies will be separated by interleaved carbon plies whereby inscriptions may be transferred throughout the assembly. When assemblies having interleaved carbon are employed, it is necessary to separate the carbon from the stationery plies. This is customarily accomplished when the stationery plies themselves are being separated in a deleaver.
Thus, deleavers customarily include a plurality of chutes each for receiving one or more stationery plies. Associated with each chute is a carbon take-up reel upon which the carbon adjacent the ply moving into the chute may be wound to be subsequently discarded. For smooth operation, such apparatus typically include a carbon turning bar about which the carbon ply may be trained to be directed to the carbon take-up reel. However, when the continuous business forms assembly is not of the type having interleaved carbon plies, the presence of the carbon turning bar may interfere with the refolding operation. Thus, it has heretofore been conventional to make the turning bar removable from the apparatus. Frequently, due to human error, once the turning bar has been removed and physically separated from the deleaver, it becomes misplaced and, thus, is not available for use the next time a continuous business forms assembly having interleaved carbon plies is to be processed.
As is well-known, the refolding operation includes the folding of one or more plies on the bottom of a chute into a zig-zag stack. The width of the stack will be some multiple of the length of an individual business form within the continuous business forms assembly. Because the size of individual form lengths in a continuous business forms assembly varies drastically, in some instances, where extremely large forms are employed, the bottom of the chute onto which the refolded plies come to rest, is not sufficiently large for efficient refolding. While some prior art deleavers have minimized this problem through the provision of an opening in the guide wall of the first chute following the feeding means, this, in itself, poses a problem in that the lack of a guide wall near the bottom of the chute may allow the ply to be refolded to wander and not refold properly.